Statement released by the Citizens for Justice and Peace

at
a packed press conference in Mumbai on July 7, 2003.

Zahira Habibullah
Shaikh and the entire Habibullah family have approached the
Citizens for Justice and Peace for legal aid to jointly ask for
a re-trial in the BEST Bakery Massacre. In this petition to be filed
jointly, the petitioners will also urge the higher Court to order
the location of the re-trial outside Gujarat as a consistent
atmosphere of threat pervades there under the current political
dispensation. The additional sessions judge in Vadodara had about a
week ago acquitted all the accused in the massacre who had been
consistently named by key witness, Zahira Shaikh in her statements
before the police, the NHRC and the Concerned Citizens Tribunal
(Crimes
Against Humanity, 2002).

Lack of moral and
legal support through the court hearings, coupled with an atmosphere
of direct threat and intimidation, had led her and family members to
deny recognition of the accused sitting in court the day she was
summoned for deposition - May 17, 2003. She and her family had been
directly threatened that they would all be killed by the key accused
and their mentors from the Hanuman Tekri area in Vadodara.

Substantive evidence
was also not led in the course of the trial. Therefore, today, given
the strength and support of Mumbai-based CJP they strongly wish to
ask for a re-trial. The petition in the BEST bakery case asking for
a re-trial is likely to be filed later this week.

The BEST Bakery
carnage in which 14 persons were brutally massacred over a period of
12 hours on March 1, 2002, like 18 other brutal incidents in that
period in Gujarat, epitomised the abject failure of the state
administration and law and order machinery to protect the lives and
properties of innocent citizens. Though the NHRC recommended over a
year ago that such cases be handed over to the CBI for non-partisan
investigation, and citizens approached the Supreme Court making this
plea, the apex court is still hearing this matter.

Meanwhile, the
various trials carry on within Gujarat with the legal and
constitutional processes being subverted through inadequate legal
aid from the state for victims, coupled with intimidation and threat
by the accused. Petitions praying for compensation from the state
government are still pending before the Gujarat High Court. We hope
that the example of the BEST Bakery trial brings alive the issue of
subverted constitutional norms and delayed justice that is the lived
reality in the state of Gujarat today, to other democratic
institutions in the country.